Re: No sound...?

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Andy Hewitt <thewildrover@xxxxxx> wrote:

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Andy Hewitt <thewildrover@xxxxxx> wrote:

Some are obvious, some are not. For example:

TextEdit - open selected file.

What does that one do, then? If I want to open a selected file, I'll
use the Finder. So, WTF? As they say.


In a service enabled program (used to be Cocoa programs and not Carbon
but Carbon might now work as it does in MacSoup - and yes that is not
something any user would know) select text in the program. Then choose
the services menu item TextEdit->open selected file. The services
infrastructure will then treat the selected text as a file name and
attempt to open in TextEdit.


Explain - if you can. Then explain how it's obvious as you claim - if
you can.


In most cases the service works on the selected information
and as to documentation that would have been in NeXT books/manuals I
read 15 years ago and do not know the curent state. (although the two
Apple URLs Andy gave does say that)


In many cases, what happened was `apparently nothing' or `not
available' or whatever. I've more or less ignored the Services
menu due to Apple's refusal to document it meaning that I simply
have no idea what the stuff in it's supposed to do, what it's
supposed to work on, or anything much.

A lot is down to programmers to make their software 'Services
aware'. Most are now, but a lot of older software isn't.

No, you're wrong. That has nothing to do with the matter.

It has - Apple cannot document what is in the Services menu as that
depends on the application you have installed. The applications will
register themselves in the Services menu.

The only thing Apple can document is if you select something in an
applicaiton that selection will be passed to the application in the
service menu and it is up to that applicatiion to document what it does.

I have not used services for a long time as the older non NeXT/Cocoa
software did not use it now I see a reasonable set (but only from a few
developers and most of those are from the NeXT background e.g. Apple,
Omni or development tools or browsers.) but only for text selections


These may help a little.

<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=42731>

Erm, how could that possibly help?


Hmm - yes I can see if you do not know to select something first that
will not help - like a Unix man page OK if you have a bit of knowledge.

<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh1153.html>

Okay, so you've pointed me at some `state the bleedin' obvious' docs. I
feel faintly insulted that you think such documentation could help me in
the slightest.

I need to be able to learn what the damned services do.


True but the first issue in the document there is to select something in
that original app, which from your comment re TextEdit above is one
thing that it seems you are not understanding from the information
provided.



Those pages explain precisely nothing in that line.

I can operate the basic UI and I most certainly didn't need telling
anything that those two Web pages told me because I've known all that
for a very long time.



I find the 'Format' and 'Convert' Services to be quite indispensible.

<shrug> I find I can't find out what any of it's supposed to do,
supposed to work on, and so on.

Oh come on, most of it is blindingly obvious - in plain English.

Okay, so what does

Bibdesk - Add to bibliography

do?


I do not have BibDesk but by name I assume in manages Bibliographies and
so it will add the selected text to a bibliography

Tell me, since it's so blindingly obvious.

Quite a lot of 'em makes no sense at all. The Services I had available
when I first got MacOS X seemed either incomprehensible or mostly
pointless.


You do need to know what the program supplying the services does (and
that should be documented ) - and many services are pointlesss like many
apps.

Chinese Text Converter - convert selected simplified Chinese text.

Okay, but to what? <shrug> that one's not remotely obvious either.


No idea but I don't know Chinese or the application that supplies so I
could not guess (Ok later I found it in the Services directory so it is
an Apple one to help anyone who wants to look for docs)

Import Image - and what does that one do? Import what image into what?
Not a clue.


That is a bad name - as Import Image is not the name of an app I would
think - as not on my services then I cannot tell.

Explain what it does and then explain how come it's obvious.

Grab - Screen
- Selection
- Timed Screen


Grab is the MacOS app that takes snapshots of the screen.
Running Grab.app the main task is to take a copy of all or part of the
screen. The service options map to the convert menu of Grab so instaed
of starting the app and choosing the menu option and then select,
services do select first the start(or switch) to Grab.app
Although it looks like the app needs to be written correctly - and only
Stickies appears to be OK, Mail and TextEdit are not on Leopard

Why did the Mac people mess up NeXT :)



What do they do?

They're all greyed out here - so although they appear obvious to use
just by looking at the name, they clearly need to be used in a
particular special way and there's no way to find out!


Select an area first as per the second Apple document - although from
the testing I have done writing this I would not be surprised if only
text based services appeared to work. Grab and image capture are graphic
based.

It's most peculiar, this behaviour of yours.

Look, File menu. `Close' commnd.

That doesn't tell you what it does, does it? If you have learnt what it
does, you think that it tells you what it does and you can't forget, but
`Close' is just `Close'.

What it means is `Close the file open in the frontmost window' - that is
the plain English description.

But it doesn't /say/ that, does it? No, it just says `Close'. 1/8 of
the number of words needed.



Services work that way but the application you need to know is the
application that will be run not the current application. So if Clsse is
acceptable on menu then the service menu should have enough information.

I used Win 2 once. It was awful. I've read about Win 1. It was a sick
joke.

[snip]


Win 2 allowed you to use a GUI app - Word and Excel worked (and probably
have not really got any better GUI/usabilitywise since then) However as
you can use TeX and generate documents from plain text that would not
not be any use to you. However many users I had to help preferred it as
they could see the formatting and change to bold, centered etc. as they
typed but I am in a minority in preferring styles. (I want a GUI driven
Tex in commoin use)

There is that. My other half can often be heard swearing in frustration
at MS Word, and she uses it quite a lot (demands of work, collaborative
documents, that sort of thing - although whenever possible, she does it
with LaTeX).


The cynical coment here is that most people do not want to learn up
front and just want to do it. (as per one of your later posts) Word
takes them that far but whan you do more complex docs (say more than one
page;) ) you should use the style based things -Word does some but is
broken.
Once you learn Tex etc then Ok if the others you work with have learnt
it but that is unusal in business so we are stuck with Word (and thus
with Windows)

And where is a spell service so I can deal with MacSoup not having a
spell checker. (Ok on googling MacSoup needs to be written to use the
service - the spell service is a different type of service to the ones
on the service menu)

--
Mark
.

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